Method for depositing a credit on an account associated to a terminal subscribed to a communication network

ABSTRACT

The present invention concerns a method for depositing a credit on an account associated to a terminal subscribed to a communication network, the method comprising the steps of: interacting (1) between the terminal and a network entity, wherein said interacting yields an indication of at least whether a credit is to be deposited on said account associated to said terminal, an amount of credit to be deposited and a source of the deposit, requesting (2) from said network entity to said source of the deposit, to deposit said amount of credit on an account associated to said terminal, wherein said requesting is based on the DIAMETER protocol.

TITLE OF THE INVENTION

Method for depositing a credit on an account associated to a terminalsubscribed to a communication network

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to a method for depositing a credit on anaccount associated to a terminal subscribed to a communication network.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Recently, communication networks and services offered using suchcommunication networks have made considerable progress. Among suchservices, so-called value-added services find increasing attention amongsubscribers to the communication network.

Subscribers to the network are registered to the network and normallypay the network operator for using services offered by the communicationnetwork. Such a payment is either regularly billed to the subscriber'saccount, e.g. per month, or deducted from his pre-paid account. If theprepaid account does not show a certain minimum credit any longer, thesubscriber will be barred from further using the network until he hasrecharged his'account.

Recharging a prepaid account can be accomplished for example by paying acertain amount to be recharged to a third party and receiving a code,which —when entered—enables the user to recharge his prepaid account byhis terminal. The third party in turn transfers the money received fromthe subscriber to the network operator.

Such a procedure is quite cumbersome. Also, the third party generallyretains some of the money the user paid for the services offered by thethird party to the user/network operator. Thus, costs to be paid by thesubscriber will rise accordingly.

Likewise, in case the subscriber participates in a quiz or a lotteryusing his terminal (e.g. mobile phone or user equipment), the proceduresinvolved upon a winning subscriber are quite cumbersome and require“paper work”. The subscriber has to indicate his name/address and/orbank account so that he may receive a bank check and/or that the moneyis transferred to his bank account.

In summary, currently adopted procedures for depositing a credit on anaccount associated to a terminal subscribed to a communication networkare cumbersome and involve human activities which makes the wholeprocedure time consuming and more expensive.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Consequently, it is an object of the present invention to provide animproved a method for depositing a credit on an account associated to aterminal subscribed to a communication network.

According to the present invention, the above object is for exampleachieved by a method for depositing a credit on an account associated toa terminal subscribed to a communication network, the method comprisingthe steps of: interacting between the terminal and a network entity,wherein said interacting yields an indication of at least whether acredit is to be deposited on said account associated to said terminal,an amount of credit to be deposited and a source of the deposit,requesting from said network entity to said source of the deposit, todeposit said amount of credit on an account associated to said terminal,wherein said requesting is based on the DIAMETER protocol.

According to favorable further developments

said interacting is based on a value-added multimedia application run ona multimedia application server provided in said network,

said requesting comprises generating a DIAMETER request messageidentifying the request as a request for depositing an amount to anaccount,

said generated DIAMETER request message further includes an attributevalue pair identifying the terminal to an associated account of whichthe deposit is to be deposited, an attribute value pair identifying saidsource of the deposit, and an attribute value pair identifying theamount of said deposit,

the DIAMETER request message is routed from said network entity to saidsource based on said attribute value pair identifying said source of thedeposit,

the method comprises a step of acknowledging, by said source, whethersaid request was successful or not to said requesting network entity,

the method further comprises a step of depositing said amount to saidaccount associated to said terminal upon receiving an acknowledgmentindicating success,

the method further comprises a step of informing said terminal of theamount being deposited to an account associated to said terminal.

By virtue of the present invention, basically the following advantagescan be achieved:

with the proposed modifications to the DIAMETER protocol, it can beadopted for on-line charging purposes e.g. in the IP MultimediaSubsystem IMS of communication networks,

making a deposit on a subscriber's account, i.e. an account associatedto a terminal used by the subscriber can be effected using the DIAMETERprotocol,

on-line charging and/or depositing of an amount can be effected withoutinvolving a third party (vendor at a shop or the like) to become activeas the service provider can upload winnings immediately to the accountassociated to the user's terminal (e.g. a prepaid account), therebysaving administrative work,

services involving on-line charging/depositing benefit from thesimplification of the charging/depositing emerging from the proposedinvention,

new services such as games/quizzes or lotteries can easily beimplemented to be carried out interactively by a subscriber using histerminal.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In the following, the present invention will be described in greaterdetail with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which

FIG. 1 shows a simplified signal flow of the steps involved upon thepresent invention being implemented.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS

According to the present invention, in order to enable the deposit of anamount of money, or generally a credit of units (which need notnecessarily correspond to money) to an account associated to theterminal through an interface between a network element NE and anAccount Server, a new mechanism is introduced. The new mechanism reliesfor example on the DIAMETER protocol. It involves in that case a newDIAMETER request including an indication that the request is adeposit/credit to the account and also a new Attribute Value Pair AVPindicating the source of the deposit/credit. The answer messageindicates to the network element whether the request was successful ornot. It has to be noted that ACR as such is not a new request, this isjust a new “mechanism” in connection with which also the amount of thedeposit must be indicated as well as the identity of the subscriber.

As regards the DIAMETER protocol on which the present invention forexample relies, Diameter is an AAA (Authentication, Authorization andAccounting) protocol specified in IETF. By virtue of the presentinvention, DIAMETER is adapted to be used for on-line charging incommunication networks, for example in connection with the IP MultimediaSubsystem IMS. The All-IP network (IP=Internet Protocol) will offer manynew services. This invention enables DIAMETER to be used for making adeposit on the user's account, thus introducing a quite useful featurefor some services. For example, this mechanism supports some servicessuch as games/lotteries performed via the communication network; moreprecisely, the subscriber could win something i.e. in a game and theservice provider/network operator could upload the winnings immediatelyto a user's account such as a prepaid account. This solution would alsoprovide a benefit to the operators since the money would go directly tothe prepaid account and would thus be spent again for communicationservices.

This will be explained in still greater detail with reference to FIG. 1.FIG. 1 illustrates (horizontally arranged) entities involved inconnection with the present invention and signaling there between. Invertical direction, the succession of the signaling with lapse of timeis represented. As regards the entities involved, FIG. 1 shows a userequipment UE (e.g. according to UMTS) as an example for a terminal. Theterminal has subscribed to a communication network represented by atleast one network element NE. It has to be noted that the networkelement NE shown in FIG. 1 may combine several functionalities of thenetwork, which for simplification of the drawing and explanation are notshown as individual functional network entities. Furthermore, anaccounting server is shown which is involved in connection with thepresent invention.

Associated to the terminal is an account for depositing a creditthereon. This account can be a pre-paid account maintained for theterminal/subscriber at the network operator (e.g. in connection withsubscriber data maintained at the HLR (Home Location Register)/HSS (HomeSubscriber Server). Nevertheless, another account is also possible, e.g.a bank account associated to the terminal/user so that e.g. thesubscriber ID (e.g. telephone number) is mapped to a bank accountnumber. In the latter case, additional routing/rerouting will beinvolved in order that the deposit is made on the account associated tothe terminal.

In a first step (1.), there is an interaction between the terminal and anetwork entity. The interaction may comprise the bi-directional exchangeof data between these and may reside in a game/lottery or the like inwhich the subscriber participates by means of his terminal. Theinteracting is for example based on a value-added multimedia applicationrun on a multimedia application server provided in said network. (Notethat the network element NE is assumed to comprise this server in theillustration according to FIG. 1).

As a result, in case the user wins in the game or something similar,said interacting yields an indication of at least that a credit is to bedeposited an said account associated to said terminal, an amount ofcredit to be deposited and a source of the deposit. The source of thecredit to be deposited here means the party who runs the game/lottery,more precisely, the party is represented by an accounting serverassociated to the third party and in charge for the payment of thecredits to the winners. The third party is represented by the networkentity NE with which the interaction takes place. For example, in case aplurality of games is offered to be played, the user equipment UEinteracts with a selected network entity out of a correspondingplurality of network entities. Allocated to the respectively selectednetwork entity there is at least one accounting server in charge ofdepositing the deposit to the account associated to the user equipment.The network element decides where the request is to be routed to, i.e.to which accounting server. This decision/selection can be based on e.g.the subscriber information (e.g. in case of plural accounting serversper network entity) and/or based on the address or identity of thenetwork element NE (e.g. if plural games can be played each involving arespective network entity operated by a third party). If only oneaccounting server is provided for, then the routing is easy whilehowever the requesting network entity has to be indicated in the request(using a new AVP for this purpose). To clarify, the source of thedeposit viewed from the terminal's/user's account is the accountingserver, while the accounting server always has a knowledge of the originof the deposit he makes, i.e. of the identity of the third party withwhich the terminal has interacted by e.g. playing a game. Thereafter, ina second step (2.), it is requested from said network entity NE to saidsource (here: accounting server) of the deposit, to deposit said amountof credit on an account associated to said terminal. (Note that theamount of credit deposited to the account associated to the terminalwill correspondingly be debited to an account associated to the thirdparty/network element, i.e. the origin of the amount to be deposited.)This requesting is based on the DIAMETER protocol. Note that in FIG. 1,the network element NE may take care of the functionalities of aDIAMETER client, DIAMETER server as well as DIAMETER proxy agent, ifrequired according to the circumstances.

It is to be noted that DIAMETER has been chosen as an example only forthis embodiment of the present invention. Other AAA protocols such asRADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) or any othersuitable AAA protocol could be accordingly adapted as proposed by thepresent invention. A brief introduction to DIAMETER can for example befound in “Authentication, Authorization and Accounting in SessionInitiation Protocol Networks” by Aki Niemi, Master's Thesis at theHelsinki University of Technology (HUT), Mar. 7, 2002 (retrieved fromthe Internet on Jun. 3, 2002), pages 26 to 36.

This request is based on a generated DIAMETER request message(ACR(Event_Record)) identifying the request as a request for depositingan amount to an account. To this end, a new request identity in theDIAMETER protocol is defined. Stated in other words, more precisely, incase of DIAMETER protocol, the command code identifies the command andhere an existing Diameter request (ACR, Accounting Request) is used.Also an existing AVP (Accounting-Record-Type) is used (its value isevent_record in this case). In addition to this, some indication (a newAttribute Value Pair AVP, i.e. some specific AVP used only for thisservice) is needed that will indicate that the purpose of the request isto deposit an amount of e.g. money to an account. The thus identifiedgenerated DIAMETER request message further includes a (newly defined)attribute value pair AVP identifying the terminal (here UE) to anassociated account of which the deposit is to be deposited, an attributevalue pair identifying said source of the deposit (i.e. the accountserver), and an attribute value pair identifying the amount of saiddeposit. Note that in case plural accounts are associated to oneterminal, the terminal identification additionally includes anindication of the account concerned. For example, in case of a terminalbeing used by several users, each entering a personal identificationcode when taking the terminal in use, the account concerned can bedistinguished based on the user's ID. Thus, not only the terminal assuch but also the account concerned is then included in the AVP in caseplural accounts are associated to the terminal.

This DIAMETER request message is routed from said network entity NE tosaid source based on said attribute value pair identifying said sourceof the deposit. In FIG. 1, only one accounting server is shown forsimplicity of the drawing. Nevertheless, in case more than oneaccounting server is available in the entire network, the request isrouted to the “correct” one identified by the AVP. The entry into theAVP thus represents an address for routing.

Upon receipt of the request in step 2, the source acknowledges in step3., whether said request was successful or not to said requestingnetwork entity. This acknowledgment is returned in an ACA Event_Recordmessage according to the DIAMETER protocol. Also for this message, asuitable result code covering possible results to be informed to therequesting network element is newly defined. In case of a positiveacknowledgment, i.e. upon receiving an acknowledgment indicatingsuccess, a step of depositing said amount to said account associated tosaid terminal is performed. This step is not shown separately but isperformed at the network element upon evaluation of the acknowledgment.That is, the network element has already knowledge of theterminal/account concerned and of the amount to be deposited andperforms the depositing upon a confirmation to do so (positiveacknowledgment).

Finally, according to the proposed method, informing said terminal ofthe amount being deposited to an account associated to said terminal isperformed in step 4. This informing needs not to rely on any specificprotocol requirements. For example, it can be effected using a similarmulti-media application as in step 1. The user of the terminal has thenknowledge of his updated account balance upon the amount beingdeposited.

Thus, one advantageous application of the present invention resides ine.g. IP Multimedia services, where Diameter is adopted for onlinecharging. In this way, a multimedia application server (e.g. gameserver) could use the same Diameter charging connection to the accountfor depositing winnings and no separate connections are needed.

Accordingly, has been described above, the present invention concerns amethod for depositing a credit on an account associated to a terminalsubscribed to a communication network, the method comprising the stepsof: interacting 1 between the terminal and a network entity, whereinsaid interacting yields an indication of at least whether a credit is tobe deposited on said account associated to said terminal, an amount ofcredit to be deposited and a source of the deposit, requesting 2 fromsaid network entity to said source of the deposit, to deposit saidamount of credit on an account associated to said terminal, wherein saidrequesting is based on the DIAMETER protocol.

While the invention has been described with reference to a preferredembodiment, the description is illustrative of the invention and is notto be construed as limiting the invention. Various modifications andapplications may occur to those skilled in the art without departingfrom the true spirit and scope of the invention as defined by theappended claims.

1. A method for depositing a credit on an account associated to aterminal subscribed to a communication network, the method comprisingthe steps of: interacting (1) between the terminal and a network entity,wherein said interacting yields an indication of at least whether acredit is to be deposited on said account associated to said terminal,an amount of credit to be deposited and a source of the deposit,requesting (2) from said network entity to said source of the deposit,to deposit said amount of credit on an account associated to saidterminal, wherein said requesting is based on the DIAMETER protocol. 2.A method according to claim 1, wherein said interacting is based on avalue-added multimedia application run on a multimedia applicationserver provided in said network.
 3. A method according to claim 1,wherein said requesting (2.) comprises generating a DIAMETER requestmessage identifying the request as a request for depositing an amount toan account.
 4. A method according to claim 3, wherein said generatedDIAMETER request message further includes an attribute value pairidentifying the terminal to an associated account of which the depositis to be deposited, an attribute value pair identifying said source ofthe deposit, and an attribute value pair identifying the amount of saiddeposit.
 5. A method according to claim 4, wherein the DIAMETER requestmessage is routed from said network entity to said source based on saidattribute value pair identifying said source of the deposit.
 6. A methodaccording to claim 1, further comprising a step of acknowledging (3.),by said source, whether said request was successful or not to saidrequesting network entity.
 7. A method according to claim 6, furthercomprising a step of depositing said amount to said account associatedto said terminal upon receiving an acknowledgment indicating success. 8.A method according to claim 7, further comprising a step of informing(4.) said terminal of the amount being deposited to an accountassociated to said terminal.